“For me, home wasn’t a freezer”

Works of postmemory in Israeli Shoah documentaries

Martina Sögaard

JUDK10 Jewish Studies: Bachelor's Degree Project, 15 credits

Supervisor: Johan Åberg

Examiner: Magdalena Nordin

Autumn 2014

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Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to examine how the Shoah affects Israeli society today and deals

with the construction of identity and collective memory of the Post-Shoah generations in

Israel. The study analyzes three Israeli documentary films through the theory of Marianne

Hirsch’s “postmemory”. These films are The Flat (2011), Six Million and One (2011), and

Defamation (2009). The essay cast its light on themes that seems to penetrate the modern

Israeli society. It discusses “The German problem” – resentment and struggle against the

German culture, how the Post-Shoah generations try to repair the holes in their family history

and lastly “The Cultural Trauma” that pervades the Israeli society. To analyze the

documentaries I have used a hermeneutic text interpretation, but also highlighted how the

directors use photography in order to create collective memory and identity. The

documentaries show that the Post-Shoah generations construct their collective memory and

Jewish identity through family, photography and trips of return to Europe.

Keywords: Collective memory, Shoah, Second generation, Third generation, documentary,

postmemory, Israel, identity

Abstract (Swedish)

Uppsatsen behandlar Andra och Tredje generationens konstruktion av identitet och kollektivt

minne i Israel. Syftet med uppsatsen blev att försöka fylla en del av den lucka som

forskningen lämnat till nutida dokumentärer. I studien analyseras tre israeliska

dokumentärfilmer från 2000-talet. Med utgångspunkt ur The Flat (2011), Six Million and One

(2011), och Defamation (2009) lyfter uppsatsen fram tre teman: "Det tyska problemet", hur

Post-Shoah generationer försöker fylla i luckor i sin släkthistoria samt "Det kulturella

traumat" som genomsyrar det israeliska samhället. Som teori använder jag Marianne Hirschs

”postmemory” och filmerna analyseras med metoden hermeneutisk texttolkning. Uppsatsen

lyfter även fram hur regissörerna använder fotografier för att skapa kollektivt minne och

identitet. Dokumentärerna har visat att Andra och Tredje generationen i Israel konstruerar sina

kollektiva minnen och judiska identiteter med hjälp av familjen, fotografier och återvändande

resor till Europa.

Nyckelord: Kollektivt minne, Shoah, Andra generationen, Tredje generationen, dokumentär,

”postmemory”, Israel, identitet

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Contents

Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 2

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 4

1.1 Collective memory and Postmemory ............................................................................... 5

1.2 Purpose statement and Research Questions ...................................................................... 8

2. Terminology ........................................................................................................................... 9

3. Methodological Considerations ............................................................................................ 12

3.1 Hermeneutics and text interpretation .............................................................................. 12

3.2 Pre-understanding ........................................................................................................... 12

4. Material ................................................................................................................................ 13

4.1 The Flat ........................................................................................................................... 14

4.2 Six Million and One ....................................................................................................... 14

4.3 Defamation ..................................................................................................................... 15

4.4 Note on translation and transliteration ............................................................................ 15

5. Background .......................................................................................................................... 16

5. 1 Previous Research .......................................................................................................... 16

5.2 Collective memory in Israel ........................................................................................... 19

6. Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 22

6.1 The German problem ...................................................................................................... 22

6.2 Living in the light of the Shoah ...................................................................................... 26

6.3 The Cultural Trauma ...................................................................................................... 33

7. Summary and Conclusions ................................................................................................... 38

8. Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 40

8. 1 Filmography ................................................................................................................... 45

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1. Introduction

A common Post-Shoah belief among graduates of the Shoah and the alumni of heroism as

well as the Post-Shoah generations is the view that they are in constant conflict with the

world. The Hebrew language, Ivrit, derives from Abraham the Ivri, meaning he was born on

the other side of the river, Euphrates. The Hebrew term ivri derives from “ever”, which means

“the other side”. Since ancient time into the present the Hebrews have been on one side, and

the rest of the world on the other; a point which Hitler restated during the Shoah.1 Lehakat

Pikud Dizengoff’s song supports the theme. “Ha'olam kulo negdeinu. Lo nora nitgaber” -

“The whole world is against us. Don't worry, we'll overcome”.2

The belief that “the whole word is against us” has sprouted and gained roots in the collective

memory in Israel, and is constantly being motivated by Israeli politicians and media. Not one

day passes without the Shoah being mentioned in the Israeli media.3 Avraham Burg is one of

the scholars in Israel who is trying to move away from this belief, and forms critiques against

the constant prominence of the Shoah in Israel. Is Israel constantly living in the past, in the

shade of the Shoah and struggling to move forward because of it?4

Israel as a nation is very diverse, consisting of different ethnic groups, with different

languages and different religions. Since Israel was founded in 1948, it has had to integrate

immigrants from all over the world and still try to maintain the majority of the population

Jewish. Meanwhile, Israel has been in constant conflict with its neighbors since the

declaration of Independence and has had to provide security for its residence on a daily basis.

Thus, Israel has placed the leading roles in the creation of a national collective within the

educational system and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) in order to construct a sense of

community mainly through a shared history and future. The ceremonial commemoration of

the Shoah, Yom HaShoah has become one of the most important days in Israel and in creating

a sense of shared history and a collective identity.5

1 Burg 2008, p.107

2 Written by Yoram Teharlev in the 1970s, video at YouTube. See Teharlev (2014)

3 Burg 2008, p.13

4 Burg 2008, p.16

5 Bialer & Kersting 2010, p.58-59

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Over 88 % of the 198,000 Shoah survivors that lived in Israel in 2012 are over 75 years old

and in need of special home arrangements and help in daily needs. At least one survivor dies

every hour in Israel, this equates to 12,000 every year.6 The memory of the Shoah will soon

rely completely on written testimonies, photography, films and the Post-Shoah generations.

Of course, this raises a number of questions about memory (and identity). Which memories

will be brought forth? Whose memory? What will happen to the collective memory in Israel,

when no survivors are longer alive? Which medium will be the primary in conveying the

memories of the Shoah?

1.1 Collective memory and Postmemory

As theory for my analysis I will use Marianne Hirsch’s “postmemory”, which I consider to be

an aspect of collective memory. In regard, “postmemory” and “collective memory” are both

concepts and theories. In this section I will explain these two theories.

“Collective memory” is an umbrella term for a range of different types of memory. The

concept of collective memory originated from the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. Although

Halbwachs was influenced by Èmile Durkheim, the term collective memory implies memory

is necessarily socially constructed.7 Since collective memory can be understood and defined

in several different ways, we must try to find a further definition that can be seen as universal

for all understandings and definitions. Peter Novick understands collective memory to be

“memories that suffuse group consciousness” – memories that are both about the past and the

present, and which is believed to make a statement about “who we are now”, something

essential that defines our identity.8 In this way a group's identity is constructed of images,

traditions and memories to give its members a sense of belonging, a socially constructed

community. The group’s size or complexity can differ; it can be big and an “imagined

community” 9

in form of nationalism or small, like a family, whose members are all known.

Furthermore, the relationship between identity and memory is circular and dependent on each

other. In research, Halbwachs claims that all individual memory is constructed within social

institutions and that the personal memory is understood only through a group framework.10

In

6 Eglash 2012

7 Green 2004, p.37

8 Novick 1999, p.170

9 See Benedict Anderson’s Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.

10 Halbwachs 1992, p.53-55

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other words, collective memory is constructed by a social group to enhance its unity and

identity, but is dependent on the individuals remembering. It is argued that the only individual

memories that are not constructed through social framework and structure are the images of

dreams, since they are unstable and fragmentary with no organization and can therefore not

provide the social group with any cohesive or structured memory.11

Lewis A. Coser distinguishes historical memory from autobiographical memory in

Halbwachs. “Historical” means a processed and shared creation of memory that we did not

live to experience, which is stimulated indirect through commemoration, books, film and the

educational system. The autobiographical memory is individual, meaning memories of events

that we personally experienced.12

Taking the Shoah in consideration, individual

autobiographical memory is reserved only for the actual eyewitnesses, the first generation of

survivors. The memories of the Post-Shoah generations will thus be “historical” memories,

memories of events occurred before their birth that they receive through commemorations,

photography and listening to stories.

Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann has widened Halbwachs concept of collective memory. Jan

Assmann introduced the distinction between “communicative memory” and “cultural

memory” to differentiate the different aspects of collective memory.13

The “communicative

memory” is autobiographical and is transferred to the next generation through everyday

communication, in a time span of 80-100 years. Cultural memory resembles the “historical”

memory by already being in the past, and is communicated through ceremonial

commemorations with a time span of 3000 years.14

Aleida Assmann extends this into four

formats. 1. Political memory – Mediated memories, founded on external symbols and material

representations, but also relies on education and collective participation. 2. Social memory –

A communicative and intergenerational memory which is transmitted through social events

and oral communication, usually within a family. 3. Individual memory – Memories essential

for building a social identity and inner self, but not exclusively private memories since

memory needs to be constructed within social institutions. 4. Cultural memory – Mythical and

historical memories that relies on external representation such as monuments, museums,

11

Halbwachs 1992, p.174 12

Coser 1992, p.23-24 13

Assmann 2008, p.110 14

Assmann 2008, p.117

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ceremonial commemorations and other mnemonic institutions, memories that creates a

cultural (collective) identity in social groups and societies. 15

Social memory and individual memory are designed as intergenerational memories, while

political memory and cultural memory are designed to be transgenerational e.g.

transgenerational trauma that is transferred from the first generation survivors to the Second

and subsequent generations. The term transgenerational refer to things that are passed on

from generation to generation.

Marianne Hirsch introduces in The Generation of Postmemory, the concept of postmemory; a

“structure of inter- and transgenerational return of traumatic knowledge and embodied

experience” and a “consequence of traumatic recall but at a generational remove”.16

The

“post” in “postmemory” is used to mark the development of memory. Postmemory describes

the relationship that the Second generation has to the collective, individual and cultural

trauma of the generation before them, the traumatic experiences before their time that has

been transmitted to them in such degree that it constitutes memories of their own.17

If I am to

understand “postmemory” based on this, it binds together the distant and symbolic elements

of historical and cultural memory with the familial and closeness elements of individual

memory. The concept postmemory is characterized by an omnipresent absence and relies on

photography as the primary source of transmission of trauma.18

Hirsch uses the term

“postmemory” when reading and viewing art and works made by the Post-Shoah generations.

The most prominent examples Hirsch applies postmemory to are Art Spiegelman’s Maus and

W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, using these texts to reveal how the work of postmemory falls on

familiar and cultural images that is shaping the Post-Shoah generations. By analyzing the

images in Maus, Hirsch verifies that the Post-Shoah generations only can imagine the

experience in concentration camps of the First generation survivors, through public and well-

known images.19

What makes “postmemory” a suitable concept and theory for my analysis is

the key terms, which are memory, family and photography and that photography in this case

is a key element in the construction of identity.

15

Assmann 2006, p. 212-222 16

Hirsch 2012, p.6 17

Hirsch 2012, p. 5-6 18

Hirsch 2012, p.247 19

Hirsch 2012, p.30

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1.2 Purpose statement and Research Questions

Based on my personal interest in Israel and my relations with Third generation descendents,

my interest in Jewish identity and collective memory in Israel has emerged. My purpose with

this essay is to examine how the Shoah affects Israeli society today. By analyzing Israeli

Shoah documentaries I aim to identify how the Second and Third generation descendants

construct their Jewish identities and collective memory in relation to the Shoah. I will

examine what kind of collective memory the filmmakers reveal or do not reveal. This will be

done by analyzing the films through the concept of collective memory and the theory of

postmemory. As I will discuss in a later section, a large part of the previous research has

focused on narrative film, and left a gap for contemporary documentaries. I aim to fill a small

part of that gap by focusing on some of the latest Israeli documentaries of the Shoah. The

three themes I focus on are the “German problem”, the repair of the holes in family history

and the “cultural trauma” as I consider these to be important in the construction of identity

and collective memory in Israel. The idea of the themes emerged as I was watching the

documentaries, and I found that these three themes have not been the focus of previous

research on the Shoah and film.

The research question addressed in this essay is:

How does contemporary Israeli documentary film highlight the “German problem”, the repair

of the holes in the family history and the “cultural trauma” as significant in the construction of

Jewish identity and collective memory of the Post-Shoah generations in Israel?

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2. Terminology

This essay deals primarily with the Second and Third Generation and their collective identity,

and collective memory in relation to the Shoah. This section explains concepts that are central

to the study.

Holocaust or Shoah

The biblical word Shoah (appears for example in Isaiah 47:11, Psalms 35:8 and Proverbs

3:25) is the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry in the 1940s and

translates to "destruction" or "calamity". The general term for the crimes and horrors

perpetrated by the Nazis is the English term Holocaust, which means burnt sacrifice and has

its roots in the ancient Greek word "holokaustos", a religious offering completely burnt and

consumed by fire.20

The term Holocaust, described in its fullest in Leviticus 1, adopts a

theological meaning when it is used to describe the Nazi genocide of Jews, as if the victims

were animals sacrificed to a God.21

In regard, the concept Holocaust includes the entire Nazis'

systematic extermination of Europe, primarily Jews, but also Romani, Slavic peoples, the

disabled, homosexuals, and political and religious opponents. I consider it therefore important

to use the Hebrew term Shoah for the destruction of the European Jewry, because it is less

theologically loaded than “Holocaust”.

Second and Third Generation

There are several definitions for “the second generation”, a term coming into common usage

during the 1980s. Eva Hoffman defines the Second generation as “children of survivors”. 22

Kathy Grinblat has two definitions of the term: those who are “born to Jewish parents who

had survived the Holocaust” and “the generation that was never meant to have been born”.23

Hoffman is one of those who identify a problem with the term and recognizes it as an

“imagined community”, because what the Second generation has in common are not events

belonging to their time of living, but events of their prehistory.24

Hoffman coins a new term

for this generation, “postgeneration” as they are defined by their “post-ness” and being a

postwar generation, they did not have any direct experience of extremity or collective

20

Auron 2005, p.154; Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial 21

Baron 2006, p.23 22

Hoffman, 2005, p.26 23

Grinblat 2002, p.1 24

Hoffman 2005, p.28

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violence.25

This term would perhaps also work for the Third generation, since they have not

experienced the collective violence of the Shoah either. The concept Third generation

indicates the grandchildren of the Holocaust survivors, the children of the Second generation.

I do however recognize a problem with changing the concept Second and Third generation to

“postgeneration”, seeing as children born after the new Millennia, after 2000, are called the

post generation.

The Second and Third generation also have different experience on the aftermath of the

Shoah. When I acknowledge the two generations together, I will instead use the concept Post-

Shoah generations, which includes all generations born after the Shoah. Helen Epstein holds a

small discussion on what constitutes 2 G’s (Second generations): a sense of shame, denial,

silence, and a sacred duty to have children, to ensure that the 6 million deaths were not in vain

and to preserve the evil of the Shoah.26

“The one common element is enormous physical and

psychic disruption in our family history because of great catastrophe” said Epstein.27

I find it

difficult to find a suitable term for the Second generation other than the one that previously

exists, as the Second generation is so distinctive. To distinguish Second generation survivors

from the second generation as a general reference, I prefer to mark Second generation, the

children of Shoah survivors, with capital letter. The Second generation came forth as an

identifiable group in 1970s America, as children of survivors searching for their identities.

Third generation however, coalesced as a group of teenagers in Israel eager to learn about

their grandparent’s history.28

By using capital letter for the Post-Shoah generations I

distinguish the concepts from the general terms, and to differentiate them from each other I

will use the terms Second generation and Third generation, with capital letters. Regarding the

term “generation”, it has had a common meaning of “individuals who were born at about the

same period of time”. Although, the meaning of the concept “generation” has changed and

become a symbolic concept for people of the same age who share a similar social experience

or collective memory.29

This new definition of “generation” seems to fit well with the

definitions of Second and Third generation discussed above, as they share a collective

memory.

25

Hoffman 2005, p.25 26

Epstein 1988, p.18-22 27

Smith 1997 28

Fogelman 2008 29

Khatib 2010, p.17

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Identity

The term identity derives from the Latin “idem” which means “the same”. If we are to

understand identity based on this definition, it would in general terms mean that identity is

something constant, a distinctiveness that never changes, that always is “the same”. It could

also mean that we are “the same”, a feature that is communal to a group, a collective identity.

“The identity of any man or woman is, after all, or often is, a palimpsest composed of

fragmentary memories, imprints, of those he or she has loved”30

According to Bernard

Harrisons definition of the term, identity is a manuscript on which writing has partially or

completely been erased and replaced with new writing, in relation to memories. If we are to

understand the dynamic concept of identity based on Harrison’s definition, identity is

constructional. As infants our identity is dependent on our parents and ambient, but with time

we create identity ourselves based on memories, experience and imprints. In relation to the

changing reality the concept identity constantly needs to be redefined. The concept of

collective identity has been defined by Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper as “an

individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community, category,

practice, or institution”.31

Based on this definition I understand collective identity to be

something generated and shaped between individuals. Collective identity is interrelated with

collective memory, as memories that we believe expresses the core of our collective identity

are chosen as collective memories, and the collective memory helps to create a collective

identity.32

The definitions of identity and collective identity are so versatile that I consider it

important to determine the definition I regard as most suitable for this essay. When I hereafter

mention identity, it will be with the definition of identity that Harrison expressed, that identity

is constructional and changes in relation to memories, experiences and imprints. The

collective identity will be understood as something developed and formed between

individuals, in conjugation with the above definition of identity.

30

Harrison 1996, p.4 31

Polletta & Jasper 2001, p.285 32

Novick 1999, p.7

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3. Methodological Considerations

3.1 Hermeneutics and text interpretation

The documentaries in this essay will be interpreted mainly as texts with a qualitative method.

I will analyze the films with the method of hermeneutic text interpretation33

in order to

identify which imagery the documentary films show in creating Jewish identity and collective

memory in Israel. The benefit of using hermeneutic text interpretation as my method is that I

am interested in finding the underlying meanings and significance in the Post-Shoah

generations’ communication through speech in the films. A disadvantage is that with a text

interpretation I cannot examine how the directors apply and use photography in their works of

postmemory, which is why I balance this method with a very simple form of film analysis. I

have not chosen a specific approach of my film analysis, since I want to keep it subtle. To

clearly present the material, the work is divided into different parts, in accordance with the

hermeneutics, where I present the material in the three different themes “The German

problem”, “Living in the light of the Shoah” and “The Cultural trauma”. Each theme has a

specific film in focus, even though they integrate to some extent. According to the

hermeneutics the relationship between part and the entirety are significant and must be

understood in relation to each other.34

The purpose of hermeneutics is to understand the

reality without any claim of generalization and within hermeneutics it is understood that we

can never place ourselves outside of ourselves in relation to what we are studying.35

The

researcher approaches the material subjectively and always interprets on the basis of her pre-

understanding.36

3.2 Pre-understanding

Pre-understanding are the thoughts, feelings, knowledge and impressions that the researcher

already has when approaching a topic. These are an asset to interpretation, not an

impediment.37

Based on this, my interpretation of the films is to be marked by my gender, age

and Swedish collective identity, which provides me with a specific set of experiences,

knowledge and values. It will be formed by my experiences in Israel and my basic knowledge

of Hebrew. Additional factors that influence my pre-understanding are my studies in

33

Patel & Davidson 2011, p.28 34

Patel & Davidson 2011, p.29 35

Ödman 2001, p.10 36

Patel & Davidson 2011, p.29 37

Patel & Davidson 2011, p.29

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Religious Studies and my specific studies in Jewish Studies in the last 2 years, as well as my

experience of working at an American Reform Jewish summer camp for 2 consecutive years.

These factors might result in a different interpretation of the films than a person who grew up

in the Jewish culture and in Israel.

4. Material

This study will analyze three Israeli documentary films from the 21st century. The Flat (2011)

centers on the Goldfinger family while they empty and clean out the director’s grandmother’s

(Gerda Tuchler’s) apartment in Tel Aviv after her passing. Six Million and One (2011)

focuses on the filmmaker David Fisher and his siblings when they embark on a journey to

Austria where their father was interned at the concentration camps Gusen and Gunskirchen,

while the director reads from their father’s memoir written after the liberation. Defamation

(2009) differs from the other films as the director Yoav Shamir is on a mission to answer the

question “What is anti-Semitism today?". The number of films I have chosen shows different

aspects of how to create collective memory and identity.

The aim for this essay is to analyze documentary films addressing the Second and Third

generation as the main characters and for that reason I choose The Flat and Six Million and

One. However, this was not the case for Defamation, where the filmmaker Yoav Shamir

speaks with an array of people, including the Anti-Defamation League and people on the

streets in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to examine violence against Jews. I chose to include

Defamation in my analysis because the director joins Israeli school pupils on their trip to

Poland and Auschwitz, and show us how education in Israel deals with this uneasy subject.

These documentaries are not the typical films about the Shoah; usually ghastly visuals of

suffering, death and mass-murder. These films represent a new generation of Shoah film38

,

because rather than focusing on the Shoah, they express the Post-Shoah generations’ thoughts,

identities and memories. This new generation of Shoah film is moving away from the

historical focus and details that are common in Shoah representation, and moving towards

38

Bayer 2010, p.131-132

14

ethical concerns.39

Such ethical concerns can be seen in for example, a scene in Defamation

where an Israeli girl discusses Israel’s high threshold for violence against Arabs.

The research assessment shows that motion pictures are over-represented40

but that there is a

lack of contemporary Israeli documentaries in this field of study, which is why I chose to

work with this type of film rather than fiction. For this reason I also limited my choice to

Israeli films from the last 5 years. All three of the films belong to the genre “narrative of

return”41

and have a theme where Israelis are traveling to Europe. The research also

demonstrates that motion picture will play an important role in maintaining Shoah

remembrance. As the archive of Shoah film keeps growing42

, it ensures that this calamity will

never be forgotten, even when the original survivors are no longer living.

4.1 The Flat

Arnon Goldfinger’s documentary, The Flat approaches the question of victims and

perpetrators, and shows a clear demarcation between good and evil, in the theme of trauma

and memory and in contrast with two generations. The film centers on the director and his

family as they clean out the flat that belonged to his grandparents – both immigrants from

Nazi Germany to Palestine in the 1930s. Goldfinger gradually discovers that his grandparents

had a close and long-lasting friendship with a high Nazi SS official, Leopold Von Mildenstein

and his wife, before and after World War II. The director’s mother Hannah represents the

Second generation and the inherited sense of shame and silence adopted by her parents; the

filmmaker represents the Third generation, and the determination of learning about his

grandparents’ history.

4.2 Six Million and One

Years after his passing, Joseph Fishers’ memoir of the war was discovered. Out of his 5

children, only David, the director of the film, was able to bring himself to read it. David

Fisher convinces his siblings to go on a journey to Austria with him, and they find themselves

in the dark depths of the B8 Bergkristall tunnels, illuminated only by flashlights, where their

39

Bayer 2010, p.117 40

See Previous research 5.1 41

Hirsch 2012, p.205 42

Insdorf 2003, p.xv

15

father was endured into forced labor. The film approaches the issue of transferring trauma and

through the siblings bickering spirit towards each other, and through their journey they

become representative of the Second generation who are still wrestling with the experience of

their survivor parents. Six Million and One is the final film in a family trilogy by David

Fisher, after Love Inventory (2000) and Mostar Round-trip (2011).

4.3 Defamation

Yoav Shamir’s Defamation is a controversial documentary that investigates anti-Semitism

two generations after the Shoah. In the beginning of the film Shamir states that as an Israeli he

has never experienced anti-Semitism himself and wants to learn more about it since it is a

common reference in Israeli media. In order to answer the question “What is anti-Semitism

today?” Shamir speaks with an array of people, including the ADL (Anti-Defamation League)

which in 2007 reported a spike in anti-Semitism. With such an explosive topic, Shamir takes

on a task to investigate if anti-Semitism is being misused by Israel to justify questionable

policies, and how anti-Semitism has become an abused argumentative strategy towards Israel

and Jews, by comparing Israel’s actions with the Nazis. On the Israeli school trips to the death

camps in Poland, Shamir illustrates how Israel uses the memory of the Shoah to enhance

identity and the collective memory.

4.4 Note on translation and transliteration

The languages used in the documentaries are mainly Modern Hebrew, English, and German.

For simplicity, I will allow myself the benefit to use the English subtitles included in the films

when I wish to exemplify situations, since I am not fluent in Hebrew or German, even though

this may lead to translation problems.

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5. Background

5. 1 Previous Research

This section presents the main features of previous relevant research on the Shoah and film.

Little study has been focused on the Third generation.

In the book Identity, Place and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel by

Yaron Shemer, the author deals with the “Mizrahi dilemma”, Mizrahi ethnicity and identity in

Israeli cinema. Shemer focuses on Israeli cinema from the early 1990s and forward, some

movies dealing with the Holocaust and concludes that the aftermath of the Holocaust has

nourished a new breed of Israelis, formidable Israelis who will fight to the end. Shemer also

addresses the dilemma of the place of Mizrahi in the national memory of the Holocaust.43

The collection of essays Israeli Cinema: Identities in motion deals with collective identities

and examines Israeli Cinema “as a prism” that refracts collective Israeli identities. 44

Three of

the essays address trauma and Holocaust, only two that are relevant for this study. Ilan Avisar

builds an analysis of the Holocaust as a conflict between survival and morality, in which he

arranges the films in a chronological order. Avisar finds that the examination of the topic

(Shoah in Israeli film) suggests a historical narrative of national memory, which has been

dominated by two powerful psychological complexes and parallel ideological viewpoints: the

concern for the survival and the concerns of morality.45

The other essay, written by Liat Steir-

Livny, argues that the image of Shoah survivors in Israeli cinema is problematic and remains

almost unchanged since the Zionist narrative in the 1940s and 1950s. In this topic Steir-Livny

focuses on Israeli feature films, not on Israeli documentary film. Steir-Livny argues that the

majority of the directors portray Shoah survivors in a negative manner, as people broken in

body and spirit.46

Gerd Bayer argues in his essay “After Postmemory: Holocaust Cinema and the Third

Generation”, that there are some developments in recent film dealing with the Shoah that

moves beyond Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. Bayer analyzes two Holocaust-films made in

the early 21st century and finds that there is a “noticeable decrease in the urgency to keep

particular details in perpetual memory” and that the representations are moving “away from a

43

Shemer 2013, p.5; 19; 165-166 44

Talmon & Peleg 2011, p. x 45

Avisar 2011, p.152 46

Steir-Livny 2011, p.168-177

17

historical focus on the past and towards ethical concerns directed at future generations”.47

So

far, this has been the closest research in relation to my topic, seeing as Bayer studies movies

from the early 21st century, although not Israeli films, but French and German. Bayer does

however not write about the Post-Shoah generations but of different generations of Holocaust

film, i.e. what focus the films have. As an example, Bayer claims that films that focus on

survival and memory are connected to the second generation Holocaust cinema, while the first

generation has a testimonial quality.48

While in time we move away from World War II, the

significance of film for remembering the Shoah will grow even more. What comes after

postmemory, as the title of the essay indicates, is not forgetting, but a move towards a

memory outside of mass media and a change in the transmission of trauma, making place for

the memory within everyday life.49

Cinema and the Shoah brings together filmmakers, historians, researchers and journalists to

examine the variety of cinematic responses as well as the Shoah’s impact on cinema. Ariel

Schweitzer stands for the recognition of Israeli film, and explores films from the 1940s to

1999, only two of them explore the Second generation. Schweitzer concludes that most

commercial Israeli cinema practically never dealt with the Shoah, but that this changed in the

1980s by the climate of the First Lebanon War (1982), when Israeli historians began to debate

the main ideology in Israel “through the face of the Other”, the Shoah survivor being one of

the Other.50

During the First Intifada (1987-1993), film made by the Second generation in

Israel started to emerge, driven by a sense of urgency and duty: a necessity to collect

testimony from the earlier generation that will soon disappear.51

After the Eichmann trial and

Israel’s victory in the Six-day War in 1967, a greater Shoah consciousness grew among Jews

all over the world. Films like Shoah (1985) and Schindler’s List (1993) was a result of this

new consciousness, Nathan Abrams write in The New Jew in Film 52

which studies Jewishness

and Judaism in contemporary film.

In Projecting the Holocaust into the Present history professor Lawrence Baron focuses on

how films from the 1990s reach greater audience in the contemporary. Cinema on the Second

generation and transmission of trauma did not appear in significant numbers until the 1980s,

47

Bayer 2010, p.117 48

Bayer 2010, p.123-124 49

Bayer 2010, p.131-132 50

Schweitzer 2010, p.184-185 51

Schweitzer 2010, p.186-187 52

Abrams 2012, p.10

18

and by the 1990s it was the fourth most common theme in Shoah film. The first wave of

Second generation film was psychodramas that focused on searching for an identity, Baron

writes.53

Annette Insdorf’s Indelible Shadows investigates questions raised by Shoah cinema.

Insdorf deals mostly with European and American film from the 1940s to the 1990s, but lacks

in representing Israeli cinema from the 1990s to the 21st century. Perhaps this is because the

theme of the Shoah is rare in Israeli film.54

However, Insdorf notice a growing body of the

Second generation theme in Israeli film made after 1988 worth mentioning.55

Anna Reading mentions in the anthology Holocaust and the Moving Image that “film was a

major medium in which the events entered collective memory”, but does not base her

investigation on collective memory.56

The authors in this anthology take in consideration how

the films have contributed to consciousness and a wider understanding of the Shoah among

the audience. Reading discovers in a study that young Post-Shoah generations create their

individual memories of the Shoah from a wide range of media and cultural forms, including

film.57

Aaron Kerner study narrative and non-narrative (documentary) movies through the eye

of “the realistic imperative” in Film and the Holocaust. One of the chapters approaches

personal documentaries; such films are usually in an “observational mode” i.e. the audience is

allowed into a private world, and are always in one way or another about discovery, an

argument also true for my chosen material. With personal documentaries in observational

mode, Kerner concludes, it is not the destination that is the objective, but what is discovered

along the way.58

The essays in The Modern Jewish Experience explore Jewish presence in cinema from

America, Europe, Israel, and North Africa. Each article in the anthology focuses on a certain

film, and in the chapter dedicated to Shoah film the authors have chosen films such as

Schindler’s List (1993), The Pianist (2002) and The Pawnbroker (1964). As mentioned

earlier, Post-Shoah generations create part of their identity and individual memory through

film and media, something that Yosefa Loshitzky actualizes in his essay, where he argues that

Exodus (1960) and They Were Ten (1961) were shapers of the image of the new Israeli, if the

53

Baron 2005, p.161 54

Insdorf 2003, p.173 55

Insdorf 2003, p.212 56

Reading 2005, p.212 57

Reading 2005, p.213 58

Kerner 2011, p.211

19

new Israeli was identified as male and Ashkenazi.59

In addition, one chapter focuses on

contemporary Israeli experiences, which is close to my focus, however the essays focus

neither on identity nor collective memory in relation to the Shoah. Ilan Avisar writes that

because Israeli cinema is so new, mostly from 1979 and on, most Israeli films are also marked

by a highly personal and political tone. The Israeli documentary Comfortable Numb (1999), a

film focused on the aftermath of the Gulf War among people in Tel Aviv, depicts a society

longing for normalcy while accustoming itself to life under fire. The film Made in Israel

(2001) by the same director, Ari Folman, portrays once again the Israeli reality in constant

conflict, this time also Holocaust remembrance featuring the last surviving Nazi extradited to

Israel from Syria, in the framework of the peace agreement between the two countries. A third

film by Folman, Waltz with Bashir (2008) “deals with issues of increasing importance in

today’s cultural discourse, such as testimony, memory and persistent trauma”. It takes place in

Israel’s collective memory, where the hero tries to remember his experience as a soldier in the

First Lebanon War (1982), the hero being Ari Folman himself, with elements of images from

the Shoah, representing the trauma of his family’s legacy, as both his parents are Auschwitz

survivors. Avisar continues to discuss the latter movie based on two questions; “Does the film

strike this particular historical nerve (the Shoah) in order to test the moral and emotional

strength of a post-traumatic society? Or is Folman indeed trying to portray Israelis as the new

Nazis?” Avisar’s conclusion is that despite the narcissistic aspects that can be found in this

film, “Waltz with Bashir” was received positively among most Israelis and that it may be

some sort of breakthrough in Israeli film.60

5.2 Collective memory in Israel

In this section I will examine the collective memory in Israel and the development of this

since the 1950s to the present.

As I have discussed before, the collective memory is a selective and socially constructed

memory that functions in creating identities and boundaries. It is a fundamental ingredient in

the building of nationality and identity, nonetheless in the Israeli society. The establishment of

Israel in 1948 was a heroic period for Jews all over the world, and David Ben-Gurion

59

Loshitzky 2011, p.237 60

Avisar 2011, p.359-364

20

considered the survival of the state to be synonymous with the survival of the Jewish people.61

The collective memory in Israel has been studied since the 1980s and usually in three

different aspects. 1. The examination of a specific subject, which is the aspect I have chosen,

such as Jewish identities in context of the Shoah or the educational system. 2. The discourse

of a certain period or event, such as the Eichmann trial, or 3. A specific area, such as ultra-

orthodox Jews (Haredim) or Sephardic Jews (Mizrahim). According to Idit Gil, heroes are

fundamental elements in the collective memory in Israel, and while these shift through

different time periods, they remain important in the creation of a collective identity.62

The Israeli collective memory of the Shoah has changed over the years and adapted to the

changes in Israeli society.63

It can be studied by looking at rituals, memorial days such as Yom

HaShoah, museums, monuments, films, educational system, etc. The Israeli memory is

unique; the collective memory of the Shoah in Israel is not the same as the collective memory

of the Shoah in the United States or in Europe. The Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) in Israel

occurs e.g. not on the same day of the commemoration of the Shoah in other countries. The

International Remembrance Day falls on January 27 every year, the anniversary when

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets, while in Israel falls on the 27th of the month Nisan,

seven days before Yom Hazikaron – the commemoration day of Fallen Soldiers, and eight

days before Yom Ha’atzmaut, the Israeli Independence Day, which relates the death of the

fighters in the Shoah to the death of the soldiers, and the creation of the state of Israel as an

outcome of this.

The meaning of the term Shoah has also changed throughout the years, and in the first thirteen

years after the establishment of Israel it came to symbolize humiliation. During this time the

Shoah discourse was mainly held in the political arena. Those responsible for the humiliation

were, seen in the public discourse, the Jews themselves as they were described as “sheep

being led to slaughter”. This passive act was seen by the Zionist view as the typical Jewish

response in exile. The only ones who owned recognition and heroism were those who were

engaged in active armed resistance. Thus, many of the survivors experienced a sense of shame

for surviving.64

Three major events in the 1950s and beginning of 1960s forced Israel to deal

with the Shoah in its social and political discourse; the Law of Return, the creation of Yad

61

Shindler 2008, p.189 62

Gil 2012, p.76-77 63

Gil 2012, p.94 64

Gil 2012, p.78-81

21

Vashem and the establishment of relations with West Germany and the reparations

agreement.65

The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 changed the perception of the Shoah and

collective memory in Israel. The trial focused highly on details of the extermination and Israel

as a collective entity began to think more deeply about the Shoah and understand the

helplessness of the victims and the extent of the terrible disaster.66

Having previously focused

on resistance and heroism it now shifted the focus to death and destruction. Politicians

emphasized the birthright of the state; “a sovereign state could have prevented the Shoah”.

The educational system integrated the theme of the Shoah and all historical lessons were to be

studied through this framework.67

This change resulted in a "collective trauma" in Israel,

related to security issues, and since then every security event has aroused fears associated

with extermination and the Shoah; the “waiting period” of the Six-day War in 1967, the

murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, the Yom Kippur War in

1973 and the First Gulf War in 1991.68

This "collective trauma" which is socially constructed

has thus become part of the Jewish identity that pervades Israel. In fear that history will repeat

itself the security issue has become exceedingly vital in Israel, which is noticeable in airports,

shopping malls, museums, bus and train stations and other public places in the country.

Events after and including the Eichmann trial and the Six-Day War seems to have left a

feeling of victimization as part of the Israeli Jewish identity and collective memory, but also

the identity of a fighter who is prepared to defend himself against all odds.

In the contemporary period, from 1980s to today the term Shoah has changed meaning again

to be used as a more general concept for any catastrophe, such as “ecological shoah”, and has

entered the everyday life. Moreover, it is more focused on survival and survivors rather than

extermination and death in today’s Israeli collective memory. The Second generation was one

of the important reasons for accepting the survivors into the Israeli society. Children of

survivors wrote about their experiences of growing up with survivor parents and one

prominent contribution was Yehuda Poliker’s album “Efer ve’avak” (Ashes and dust) in

65

Cebulski 2013, p.5 66

Waxman 2006, p.113 67

Gil 2012, p.82 68

Gil 2012, p.84

22

1988.69

In conclusion, the survivors and the State of Israel symbolize the victory of Nazism.70

However, in modern Israel there is a representation among Second generation that is trying to

move on from this, for instance Avraham Burg, who argues in The Holocaust is Over, We

must Rise from its Ashes that the Jewish nation is so traumatized by the Shoah that is has

created a distrust towards the Arab neighbors and the rest of the world, that leads to a growing

nationalism, enhancing the collective identity. “Mourning time is over; the seven days of

shiv’ah are past. We are now living in the seventh decade since the Shoah, and we need to get

rid of the sack and ashes and get back to living, to a different life” Burg writes.71

6. Analysis

In this section, I will examine how identity and collective memory are constructed among

Second and Third generation in Israel in relation to the Shoah, and what memory the directors

in my chosen material choose to visualize. I will do this by highlighting a number of problems

or themes I have acknowledged in the films and hold a discussion around them.

6.1 The German problem

After the war, many survivors refused to buy German-made products, and during the early

years of Israel there was an official ban on purchasing such products.72

Some refused to even

set foot in Germany and others declined service to anyone that resembled their perpetrators.73

When the topic of repairing relations with Germany came up it was opposed by many in

Israel. The antagonists claimed that accepting restitution with Germany would mean to

cleanse the Germans of their horrible crimes.74

Even though this has been toned down and is

no longer taboo, some Israelis still feel contempt towards the German language and trips to

Germany – as it does for example in The Flat when Arnon states that

Grandma lived here for 70 years as if she’d never left Germany. Despite her years

in Israel, she never mastered Hebrew and I didn’t want to learn German.

69

Gil 2012, p.87-88 70

Gil 2012, p.94 71

Burg 2008, p.209 72

Crystal 2009 73

Hemmendinger & Krell 2000, p.172 74

Shafir 2012, p.216

23

In this example at the opening of the film Arnon expresses an unwillingness to learn German,

despite German being his grandparents’ native tongue, and his mother’s second language.

Why would Arnon not want to communicate with his family in their native tongue? It shows

an apparent opposition against the German language. Not wanting to learn German could

perhaps be seen as a modern form of resistance from the Third generation.

This also exemplifies what The Flat tells us about the Third generation, though perhaps even

more about Israel’s view on the Shoah. There is no active armed resistance as in the Warsaw

Ghetto, but an active choice. As Boaz Cohen argues, the active armed resistance is important

for the Israeli national identity,75

but I would imply that the active choice not to learn German

even though it is part of family history also is a kind of resistance against what he considers to

be "the evil". The active armed resistance has been toned down and is not as highly desirable

anymore.76

However, the resistance is still important for the Israeli collective memory of the

Shoah and the collective memory is interrelated with the collective identity, since we choose

the memory that we believe expresses the core of our collective identity.77

This means that

our collective identity and memory are shaped by how we see ourselves and how we want to

see ourselves. We can choose what memory to forget and what to remember.

In Six Million and One the siblings recoil at even hearing German spoken by one of the guides

at Mauthausen and the brother Ronel cringe, calling the German tongue a “porn-movie

language”, indicating that it is distasteful to converse in German in a place where Jews were

tormented and murdered by Nazis. David Cesarani argues that it has shown that a resistance

towards the German heritage has played an important role in creating the new “Jewish-

Hebrew identity”, and gives the example of abstaining from Wagner’s music and banning the

use of German at vocal concerts.78

In Defamation, we get to follow Israeli school pupils on

their trip to Poland, where most of the Nazi concentration camps were. Trips to Germany,

funded by German organizations where young Israelis visit local cites connected to the Shoah

and where the young generation meets German peers, are not as accepted among Israelis as

the trip to Poland, as some people disapprove of the mere principal.79

75

Cohen 2003, p. 197-198 76

Cohen 2003, p.208-209 77

Novick 1999, p.7 78

Sheffi 2014, p.71 79

Auron 2005, p.66

24

During the first half hour in The Flat, Arnon and his family start to clean out his

grandparents’ apartment in Tel Aviv, and to their surprise find Nazi propaganda and an article

about a Nazi officer named Von Mildenstein travelling in Palestine with the company of

Arnon’s grandparents. He decides to examine the article and the pictures further, and to call

up the daughter of Von Mildenstein in Germany to find out more about it, and later embark on

a journey to meet her.

You know, I’m curious to understand that, because for me it was a real surprise

that they… I mean, that my grandparents kept in contact after the war with, you

know, some Germans, at all.

It is an uncomfortable and abstruse situation for Arnon to be in Germany, and in the house of

the daughter whose father was an SS officer who gave Adolph Eichmann, one of the major

organizers of the Shoah, his job. He approaches the topic in a conservative way, in order not

to generate conflict. Arnon cannot bring himself to identify with his grandparents desire to

keep company with any Germans after the war, in particular any Nazis. Kurt Tuchler, Arnon’s

grandfather was a devoted Zionist but also a loyal German who fought during the First World

War, as did many of his generation. The Tuchler’s moved to Palestine before the Second

World War broke out, and thus escaped and survived the Shoah. So far, the postmemory of

Arnon thus becomes complicated, since what individual trauma is transferred to him through

the First generation? Is it the trauma of being forced to move, not being able to stay living in

Germany, the place the Tuchler’s considered their home? Is it the trauma of having a close

friend who almost exterminated the entire European Jewry? If the Tuchler’s even knew about

it. Or is it the entire collective trauma of the Shoah? No doubt it is. I will get into more on that

later.

According to a survey in 2010, 70 % of Israelis are not willing to forgive Germans and

Germany for the crimes during the Shoah. It shows that more secular Jews than Orthodox are

able to forgive Germans, and the younger generations are less likely to forgive them.80

In

Germany, Arnon struggles to make sense of the Von Mildensteins’ daughter Edda, whom he

visits. She received him “with an openness of someone who has nothing to hide. Yet, she

presented her father as having no Nazi past.” She even shows him articles that proves this.

80

Survey conducted by the Center for Academic Studies, results presented at

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Survey-23-percent-of-Israelis-forgive-Germany-for-Holocaust

25

Arnon Goldfinger goes to visit his grandmother’s last living friend, Gertrude Kino, also from

Germany who lives in Israel now. It is not his first visit. Arnon shows Gertrude some photos

of his grandparents on trips abroad, where they are looking very happy and the two of them

converse in Hebrew.

Arnon: You never went to Germany?

Gertrude: What for? That was a topic Gerda and I never discussed.

Arnon: Why not?

Gertrude: Because I couldn’t forgive, and I wasn’t… “German to the core” as they

used to say. I was an Israeli. Luckily. I’ve made my homeland here.

The two of them continue to discuss Germany, and Gertrude announces that his great

grandmother Susanne Lehmann was taken away, probably in 1942 and had perished in the

Shoah. He tells Gertrude about Von Mildenstein, his grandparents’ German friends, and she is

shocked to find out that they were friends with someone who was a journalist for Der Angriff,

“the worst Nazi newspaper ever”, quoting Gertrude. She is even more shocked to find out that

they kept in contact with Von Mildenstein after the war. This fact would probably be difficult

for anyone to grasp. How can Jews be friends with a Nazi? Even more inapprehensible is the

fact that the Tuchler’s renewed their friendship with Von Mildenstein after the war, after

Gerda’s mother had been murdered by Nazis. How are Hannah and Arnon supposed to be

able to relate to this, or to make sense of their collective memory? It seems to be contradictory

to Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. If postmemory only deals with transmission of trauma

from survivors, then what postmemory does Arnon and Hannah posses? The inherited

collective trauma “that their parents were not meant to survive” is non-existing in this

situation as the Tuchler’s seem to not have experienced that sort of trauma. Second

generation, or in this case Third generation, testimony is shaped by an attempt to represent the

effects of living close proximity to the pain and depression of family members “who have

witnessed and survived massive historical trauma”.81

But is this accurate for the Goldfinger

family? Indeed, the Tuchler’s did survive the Shoah, a massive historical trauma in the history

of Judaism and the world, and suffered a terrible loss with a family member murdered, but to

what degree did they “witness” the trauma?

81

Hirsch 2012, p.34

26

It seems as though Arnon has not forgiven the Germans for their crimes and throughout the

film he puts plenty of focus on an article from Der Angriff that they found in the flat. Arnon’s

work of postmemory is mainly based on this document and photographs of his grandparents

traveling with the Nazis. Arnon Goldfinger does not present us with any pictures of traumatic

events from his family album, nor does he visit any concentration camp or present us with any

photography from the Nazi camps. Therefore, I would argue that the only evidence of trauma

in his family history is his great-Grandmother who was murdered in Thereisenstadt. However,

he does confirm as a director, that there indeed was an intergenerational transmission of

trauma between his grandparents and his mother Hannah.

6.2 Living in the light of the Shoah

The Flat shows a clear distinction between the Second and Third generation image and

experience of the Shoah. The Second generation was brought up in a mindset not to question.

When comparing Arnon’s approaches and reactions to the information revealed in the film

with his mother Hannah’s reactions, it is obvious that the Third generation has a greater

tendency to ask questions and want to fill in the empty gaps in the family history. Different

expressions of "I didn’t know" are very common from Hannah, which is evidence of a family

history with large gaps and parents who did not talk about their background. In the US, one

can see similarities among the Second generation, suggesting that this is something specific to

the Jewish collective identity, not only Israeli identity. Epstein explains that as Second

generation you did not want to talk about your parents or the war, as it would mean that you

accept the Shoah as something that actually happened. It was something shameful about it,

and not something you wanted to disclose. Thus, you listened to what the parents wanted to

tell you, but you did not ask questions out of fear of saying something careless or to add insult

to injury.82

Arnon Goldfinger marvels over his mothers’ lack of interest in their background

when they discuss the trip to Palestine in relation to the Eichmann trial. Hannah, however,

sees no point in digging into the past.

What good will it do me? Will it… make me see them in a different light? I had

my own burden of living with them. I don’t really care what happened so many

years ago. No, I don’t care.

82

Epstein 1988, p.18-19

27

Hannah’s response is similar to the one Esti expresses in Six Million and One, when the

siblings are sitting deep inside the B8 Bergkristall tunnels which their father dug, by hand.

I can’t connect to this any more than I already have my whole life. I don’t need

this Holocaust trip to know where my parents were. It’s already in me. I’m one

big wound.

Had not the Third generation, in The Flat represented by Arnon, been so interested in family

history, the Goldfinger's ancestral collective memory would have vanished with Gerda

Tuchler’s passing. When searching among the family photographs Arnon creates a sense of

being “a man with a past”. The collective memory will thus have an identity creating function,

as mentioned earlier. He uses photography to create memory, and even though some

photography is public, for example the footage from the Eichmann trial, he “adopts” this into

his family photo album in attempt to create postmemory.83

While the collective memory in

Israel creates a collective Jewish identity, the memory that Arnon creates from photography

and other artifacts creates an individual identity. Arnon realizes that his mother has shunned

the past, and that she expresses a sense of “the past is the past”, what is important is the

present. Before Arnon leaves Germany Edda Von Mildenstein tells him one more thing.

I only know that there was a problem in the family, in among the Tuchler’s saying

that “Mother”, now whoever’s it was, whether hers or his, but I should imagine

that it was his mother, refused to leave her house, her place, her everything. / And

then history went that... I think they even mentioned it when they were here again,

of course she was then taken to Thereisenstadt and was killed there.

When it is revealed that Gerda Tuchler’s mother, Susanne Lehmann, died in the Shoah in

Theresienstadt, Arnon is overflowing with questions. Why did Von Mildenstein know about

this, that no one in his family had told him? Why did no one from his family have knowledge

of this?

83

Hirsch 2012, p.35

28

Hannah: Looking back, I realize they simply repressed it. Why else didn’t they

talk about it when we were growing up? She had just repressed it. I guess she felt

uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Arnon: But why didn’t you ask about your grandmother?

Hannah: I don’t know. I really don’t. I didn’t know who to ask about it. They’ve

never mentioned it.

…

Arnon: Don’t you want to talk about her?

Hannah: I have no feelings for her. I’ve never met her. To this day I don’t know

where she died, or how, whether she was murdered or…

Arnon shows his mother a list, which he got from Yad Vashem, of German Jews who

perished in the Shoah. Susanne Lehmann is on the list. This information gives the

postmemory even greater significance for the family, as it turns out that they had a relative

who died in the Shoah, which strengthens their Jewish identity and connection to the Shoah.

The conversations they have proved Epstein's definition of the Second generation to be

correct.84

The Second generation does not like to ask questions about their parents past. In

addition, this stirs up questions about the relationship between Tuchler and Von Mildenstein.

Did the Tuchler’s know that the Baron Von Mildenstein was the one who hired Eichmann,

and was thus responsible for organizing the Shoah? The distinction between "us" and "the

other" as a consequence is not as strong. It seems even more challenging for the Goldfingers

Post-Shoah generations to create their collective identity when the boundaries have become

blurred. If Jews really can be friends with Nazis, what happens with the collective Jewish

identity? And if so, what is the significance of the collective memory in Israel?

Arnon decides to go back to Germany, and this time his mother Hannah joins him. First stop

is the only relatives they have left in Germany, a distant one, which is of the same generation

as Arnon. He too, had discovered that he had a great-Grandmother who perished in the Shoah:

Paula Lehmann, sister of Heinrich Lehmann, Susanne Lehmann’s husband. They sit down and

Arnon begins to draw a family tree, and discovers that his distant relative Manu Trökes has

done the same. Hannah, as a Second generation is still unaware of what relatives she has and

84

Epstein 1988, p.18-19

29

who died in the Shoah, not even knowing the name of her grandfather. Suddenly it seems as if

the family tree is growing. Hannah feels as if an explanation is needed:

Arnon doesn’t understand how I don’t know. We didn’t ask and we were not told.

Arnon asks Manu how he knew about the destiny of Paula Lehmann. “I asked”, he says. This

only confirms what I have already suspected, that the Third generation is more likely to ask

questions and try repairing their lost family history and filling in the empty gaps. Though, it

needs to be said that this is not an attempt to generalize the Third generation or claim a truth.

This is simply what the director Arnon Goldfinger is showing us.

After they have visited their relatives in Berlin, they go to visit Edda Von Mildenstein and her

husband and we get a glimpse of the Second generation in Germany. Arnon interrogates the

party, trying to make sense of the actual work done by the Baron Von Mildenstein, but the

German party gives him several different answers: Journalist, engineer and working in the

Interior Ministry in the government are some of the ready-made answers. Edda argues that her

father was in fact not a Nazi, and that there was no proof of it, while her husband states that

Von Mildenstein must have been a Nazi, because some had to be, meaning the position he

was in forced him to be a member in the National Socialistic party and to wear the emblem.

Either Edda denies altogether that her father was involved in the organization of the Shoah, or

she was like the Second generation of survivors, brought up in an environment where you

were taught not to question. However, Arnon finds proof that Von Mildenstein was

Eichmann’s first boss and that he in fact had a connection to the SS, working in Goebbels

Ministry of Propaganda. How does all of this information about someone else’s family help

Arnon in creating his identity and postmemory? Since Arnon’s grandparents never were sent

to concentration camps, he cannot follow any traces there, so as to fill in the empty gaps in his

history he is forced instead to follow the traces he finds, which leads to Von Mildenstein.

From the “Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” written in 1948, Cebulski

argues that the establishment of Israel was a consequence of the anti-Semitism and the Shoah,

out of the necessity to protect the world Jewry and create a homeland for the Jewish people as

well as to counteract any future genocide.85

Yom Ha’atzmaut, the celebration of Israel’s

85

Cebulski 2013, p.3

30

Independence Day is seen as a victory over the Nazis. The connection to the Shoah is thus

important for the Jewish identity in Israel. By adding this information about his grandparents’

friends, Arnon adds to the postmemory of the Shoah, in an attempt to try to relate to what his

grandparents must have gone through during the war. The individual consciousness that his

great-Grandmother perished in the Shoah reinforces his Jewish identity, as he now has an

even more personal connection to the Shoah. With a personal trauma in the family history

Arnon and Hannah should feel a stronger Israeli Jewish identity, as it juxtaposes the national

trauma Israel suffers from.86

The Third generation is not represented in Six Million and One, only the Second generation

by the children of the survivor Joseph Fisher. However, it seems as though the director David

Fisher has adopted a similar curiousness for his family history as Arnon in The Flat, while the

other siblings are in a similar state of mind as Hannah.

We found Dad’s diary after he died. None of us even knew that he wrote it. 12

years have passed since then. Some of my siblings refused to read it. Others

simply couldn’t. I had no question that I would. I dived right into it and haven’t

put it down since.

My focus while analyzing the films in this essay has been to interpret them as text, and not be

concerned with camera angles and such. However, I cannot help but notice which of his

siblings the camera points to when David speak these words. By that, David shows us which

of his siblings refused to read the diary and which “simply couldn’t”.

It is not David’s first visit to Austria. He, unlike the other siblings, has traveled there before in

the search for memory. Their father had talked about the Shoah with them, but only “about

the symbols: The train, Auschwitz, Mengele and nothing else”. David follows the traces from

the memoir in Austria, leading him to Gusen, Mauthausen and Gunskirchen. There is an

instant difference from what we have seen in The Flat, already at the first minute of the film,

when David reads out loud from his father’s memoir and presents portraits from his family

album. The way David uses photography reflects how Hirsch argues that memory is

86

Burg 2008, p.9

31

transformed into postmemory. The analog photographs is digitalized and become fragmentary

remnants that are shaping cultural work of the postmemory.87

When David enters what used to be the Gusen camp he applies an anonymous photograph of

what the camp looked like during the war and lets it blend in together with what it looks like

today. This way David “adopts” the public, anonymous images into his family album and

creates a sense that he is walking in the footsteps of his father. The imaginative investment

David carries out is specific to the work of postmemory because the postmemory’s connection

to the past is mediated by this type of investment and projection.88

Throughout the film he

combines photography and footage from his personal family album with public and

anonymous photography. Hirsch argues that when public and private images and stories blend

the distinction between them becomes difficult to maintain and that this might result in a

“specifically familial generational identity”.89

The Fisher siblings struggle with dealing with what they find on their journey in Austria, and

they each have their own ways of coping with it. Some ways are familiar to how I have

presented the Second generation in The Flat, and other’s resembles the Third generation

more. Gideon is curious to find out more and expresses an admiration towards his passed

father, how he could have survived through such horror. “Did I have to come here to find out

it was horrible?” Esti says. Ronel sees through the clichés of the words his brother is using;

the “scars” their father was carrying and how he managed to “keep his sanity” after such

horror. Words from the “Holocaust lexicon” he says. It is obvious that Ronel has a very sharp

mind. However, most of them cannot understand why anyone would want to dig into the past

instead of living in the present.

It is important to impart that this is not a movie about the Shoah. Instead, it is a film about the

intergenerational transmission of trauma. It belongs to the “narrative of return” – in which

children of survivors return to their parents past homes or to “walk where they once

walked”.90

The journey that they are on creates both “rememory” and “postmemory”, two

different kinds of intergenerational transfer of trauma, although they usually slide into each

87

Hirsch 2012, p.37 88

Hirsch 2012, p.5 89

Hirsch 2012, p.35 90

Hirsch 2012, p.205

32

other. The intergenerational trauma has been communicated both through bodily experiences

and though indirect and multiple mediation91

, which can be perceived in Six Million and One.

The dark humorous conversation that the siblings have deep inside the Bergkristall tunnels is

perhaps the most revealing of how they perceive their childhood and transmission of trauma.

It is sometimes difficult to keep up with their argumentation, but it shows an honest and

emotional depth and a loving family, although full of irony, that challenges the generalization

of the intergenerational transfer of trauma.

Gideon: But when you witness what Dad went through, and you understand how

much the scars we saw in him, were nothing compared to how screwed up he

should have been then you realize we had a dad that managed, unbelievably…

Esti: To give us a normal life… Half normal.

Gideon: To keep us from the traumas he carried inside.

Esti: I want to be cruel, so I’ll tell you the truth, okay? I grew up without a father,

and I think you did too. Did you have a father? A father like all the other kids,

who was there to help with your homework, who patted you on the head? Did you

have a normal dad like that?

The argumentation continues in the tunnels and it is evidential that the siblings had very

different transfer of the trauma their father suffered at Gusen.

Esti: I’m upset that someone made my parents unable to love me, like a little girl

should be loved. Why? Why is it so? At this moment, when I think about my

childhood with those parents, which was abnormal and screwed up, like growing

up in a freezer, no love from my mom… I’m the one who lost out.

Gideon: For me, home wasn’t a freezer, it was an oven.

Esti: Because you weren’t the eldest. I came after they lost two kids, so they

couldn’t open up to me. Mom couldn’t love me. I got screwed up big-time, and

David a little less, and you even less than that, and Ronel and Amnon benefited

from the older ones. You never fought for anything, huh? Bastard.

91

Hirsch 2012, p.83

33

Ronel: Oh, so normal. They really blossomed. When I was born they really

blossomed, they just opened up more and more.

The siblings laugh.

Ronel: Really, it only got worse.

Another reason for David to bring his siblings with him on this trip is revealed by the end of

the film. Something, perhaps the different transmission of trauma has divided the family, and

David wants to get Gideon and Ronel closer to each other, to make the family whole again.

Through this “narrative of return”, the children of a survivor unites and constructs their

postmemory and identity together. Again, Hirsch’s key terms come into play: memory, family

and photography.92

These keywords are exactly what David Fisher uses in his documentary to

construct postmemory and shape their identity. The work of postmemory is to uncover what

has been covered and to reveal the layers of forgetting.93

I would argue that this is exactly

what David Fisher is trying to do, to reveal what has been or is about to be forgotten.

6.3 The Cultural Trauma

In the beginning of Defamation, the director Yoav Shamir provides us with some background

information about the Israeli school trips to Poland. Tens of thousands of Israeli students fly

to Poland each year to learn firsthand about the Shoah. In the 1980s less than 500 in the whole

country were going on the trip, today more than 30 000. “I decided to join them on their

journey and the initial preparation starting in Yad Vashem”, Shamir says.

The task of commemorating the Shoah in Israel was primarily given to Yad Vashem in 1953

when the “Yad Vashem Law” was enacted.94

As I see it, Yad Vashem is also creating and

maintaining postmemory of the Shoah in Israel. To this day it is the most important Shoah

museum and memorial in the State of Israel. The present Israeli identity is shaped by

commemoration days and museums such as Yom HaShoah and Yad Vashem, the two most

92

Hirsch 2012, p.31 93

Hirsch 2012, p.119 94

Cebulski 2013, p.10

34

important commemorative aspects in Israel in creating a sense of shared history, and a

collective identity.95

Back at the school, in Defamation, the school counselor who is in charge for the main

preparation asks everyone to describe their motivation for going on this trip.

I am the third generation of Holocaust survivors. Whenever my grandmother

talked about the Holocaust, I saw her expression of ‘Never forgive. Never forget’.

I saw what she felt, but I didn’t feel it. That’s what I want to feel on this journey,

this feeling of ‘Never forgive. Never forget’.

Not all of the young Israelis going on this trip may be Third generation in genealogy.

However, “The pupils acquire an identity as third-generation children of the Holocaust, not

through their genealogical origins but as the young members of the Jewish collective living in

Zion.”96

The image Shamir is showing in Defamation is that young generations in Israel are

being raised in the spirit of “The whole world is against us”, thinking that anyone outside of

Israel or the Jewish faith is their nemesis. The school counselor is preparing the young Israelis

for what they might experience on the journey in Poland.

Try to understand the connection between then and now. Anti-Semitism has not

ended. Israel was founded as a result of the Shoah, but anti-Semitism still exists.

If you read the newspapers, there are anti-Semitic incidents in Europe and in other

countries. You as Jews, as next generation, who are about to join the Army, you

will also have to face this aspect of our life.

Is this what the educational system in Israel is teaching the young generations? Because of the

Shoah, Israel suffers from a national trauma and has become the voice of the dead. A state

that lives in constant emergency, because “everyone is a Nazi, everyone is an Arab, everyone

hates us, the entire world is against us”.97

Since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the young

95

Bialer & Kersting 2010, p.58-59 96

Auron 2005, p.66-67 97

Burg 2008, p.24

35

generations of Israel has felt greater identification with the victims of the Shoah.98

Shamir

interviews some of the Israeli pupils that are preparing for the “Auschwitz trip”.

We are raised in this spirit; that we know that we are hated. And if a kid knows

from the start that he is hated, about what happened to his ancestors in the

Holocaust… it evokes anger toward the other side: pain, anger, even hate.

Everybody knows that Jews are hated. We were raised that way, with hatred and

anti-Semitism.

This will strengthen the Israeli in me, the Zionist and the Jew in me. I have no

doubt about it.

The trips to Poland are seen as pilgrimages to the sites of the destruction of the Jewish people,

and the participants see themselves as pilgrims in search for their identity, rather than tourists.

By visiting the “World of Death” the young Israelis adopts the testimony of those who died

and upon their return to Israel they become “witnesses” themselves, “they embody the Jewish

people who survived the Holocaust and was reborn in a strong and independent State of

Israel”. Israel thus becomes the “World of Life”.99

While the participants of the trip are in Poland three older Polish men are asking the kids if

they are from Israel. “He’s talking badly about Israel. He said we’re bitches. I understood

that”. Another girl says later on: “They called us monkeys and donkeys. We almost got into a

fight…” Shamir assures them that the Polish men did not talk bad about Israel, but the kids

are so indoctrinated by the national trauma of the Shoah they think that the Poles are out to

kill them. Back at the hotel Shamir asks the kids why they are not going out.

We’re tired…

No, I’m not tired. I’d like to go out. There are neo-Nazis here in Poland. They are

a threat. We’re in danger; they could knock on our doors and throw things through

our windows.

It’s all for our safety, we’re not allowed out.

98

Schorsch & Feldman 2001, p.159 99

Auron 2005, p.67

36

The ones who stamped our passports looked likes SS officers.

Perhaps due to the lack of the experience the kids are feeling as if they are facing anti-

Semitism. Jackie Feldman argues that the students come to associate the hotel and the bus

with Israel, with safety and “the center of life and hope”. While the “outside world of Poland

comes to stand for the Holocaust and death”.100

With them all the time the Israeli youth group

has a Secret Service Security guard, and according to Feldman the security personnel is the

one in charge. He is the one who gives orders and decides when they must arrive at places and

at what time.101

During the trips in Poland, the national identity is the main character. For example, Hatikva –

the Israeli national anthem, is played at the end of every ceremony, always.102

This is a

statement for the Israeli identity, to say “We defeated Hitler”. The Israeli kids are all wearing

sweatshirts with Magen David, the Star of David and the word Israel on the back, while

carrying Israeli flags when they visit the remains of Majdanek concentration camp. One of the

points of the film is that seeing the incomprehensible horror the Jewish people has suffered

makes other horror seem less significant, somehow, which is expressed by one of the Israeli

girls at Majdanek:

That might actually be our problem. Our threshold is too high. When we see an

Arab home demolished by the army on the news, we say that it’s not too bad. We

faced worse. They packed us into trains and forced Jews to kill Jews.

Avraham Burg also makes this point, calling it the “trauma competition”103

and points out that

the reparations with Germany were too hasty and only out of economical and state interest,

which made the relations with the Arab neighbors even worse and more hostile. “We have

displaced our anger and revenge from one people to another, from an old foe to a new

adversary”.104

The same point is stated by one of the Israeli guides towards the end of the

film:

100

Schorsch & Feldman 2001, p.162 101

Schorsch & Feldman 2001, p.161 102

Schorsch & Feldman 2001, p. 160-161 103

Burg 2008, p.24-25 104

Burg 2008, p.78-79

37

We perpetuate death and that’s why we will never become a normal people:

because we emphasize death and what happened. We have to remember, no doubt,

but we live too much in it, and it’s preventing us from being a normal people.

This cultural trauma has become a part of the Israeli identity, and it is being emphasized in the

Israeli school system. The work of the postmemory comes into play when the young Israelis

are being shown motion pictures of the horror of the Shoah; starving and malnourished Jews,

naked bodies being tossed around, innumerable bodies being buried and cleared by

bulldozers. Same as in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, they can only imagine what their ancestors

must have experienced in Auschwitz. These are the images and footage that are shaping their

postmemory of the Shoah along with the “Auschwitz trips”, where the national identity is

being reinforced.

38

7. Summary and Conclusions

Through my analysis of The Flat, Six Million and One and Defamation I have identified how

the Post-Shoah generations in Israel construct their Jewish identities and collective memory in

relation to the Shoah. What I have acknowledged is the "cultural trauma" in Israel which has

become part of the Jewish identity that pervades Israel. This sense of being in constant

conflict with the world, feeling that “the entire world is against us” is mostly visual in

Defamation, when the Israeli school kids embark on a journey to the death camps in Poland.

However, when I speak about the Jewish identity in Israel, there is an impending risk that the

Jewish identity becomes synonymous with nationality, since I have focused completely on

secular Jews and overlooked that there are other groups of Jews in Israel, for example

Haredim – the ultra-orthodox, who do not identify with the nationality of the State of Israel.

Those who do not feel a connection with the Israeli national identity thus ends up outside my

definitions, which is something to consider and discuss in future reference.

In the first section of the analysis I discussed how the German culture has become

controversial in Israeli society and how it manifests itself in the documentaries, but what I

found is that this is not something that can be generalized. Israelis have many different

standpoints on the German culture and on whether they boycott German products or see them

as superior products, and if they resent the German language or not. The documentaries

showed that the Post-Shoah generations have not forgiven Germans for their crimes, but are

open-minded in travelling to the country. In the second section I showed how the Second and

Third generation in Israel administer the memory of the Shoah in relation to their family

history. At first, I thought that there was a clear difference between how the Second and Third

generation deals with the issue of the Shoah. That the Third generation had a greater tendency

to ask questions while the Second generation would rather not talk about the past. However, it

turned out not to be so simple. Six Million and One was a gold mine in this section, where the

director challenged the generalization of intergenerational transfer of trauma, showing how

the Second generation in a family of 5 siblings has different experiences of living with

survivor parents and how differently they dealt with the issue. It showed that some of the

siblings had adopted the sense that “the past is the past” and that others were more willing to

dig into the past to find out why their father acted the way he did when they grew up, and how

he survived the camps.

39

Lastly, in the third section, I discussed the national / cultural trauma that Israel experience in

relation to the memory of the Shoah, with the main focus on the secular educational system.

In this section Defamation was in focus, as the only film to visualize the school system in

Israel. This illustrated how the Third and later generations in Israel relate to the memory of

the Shoah, and makes the point that because of the Shoah the Israeli society’s threshold for

violence is too high. Because no matter what happens to other groups in the world, or to the

Arabs in the Middle East, the Jews has always been through worse.

The documentaries have shown that the Post-Shoah generations construct their collective

memory and Jewish identity through the family, photography and trips of return to the death

camps and past family homes, although Israel uses the educational system, IDF, museums and

commemoration days such as Yom HaShoah to create a national collective and a sense of a

shared history and future. Throughout the study I have encountered new questions, for

example: how does Israel move on from the national trauma? How can Israel still remember

the Shoah without being caught in the past? In order to live peacefully with its Middle Eastern

neighbors, the turning of emphasize of death into emphasizing humanism may be crucial. I

would therefore like to agree with Avraham Burg, that the Jewish community in Israel must

not isolate itself by constantly mourning the past, and instead try to define itself by its positive

attributes.

40

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8. 1 Filmography

Defamation/Hashmatsa (2009). Director: Yoav Shamir. Israel: CINEPHIL, Knut Ogris Films,

Reveal Productions

Six Million and One/Shisha million ve'ehad (2011). Director: David Fisher. Israel: Yes,

ZDF/ARTE

The Flat/ Ha-dira (2011). Director: Arnon Goldfinger. Israel: ARTE, Arnon Goldfinger

Productions, Noga Communications